An admission.

WARNING / ATTENTION / ACHTUNG

The following post may be too much for some musically-sensitive people to handle.
If your record collection contains several albums' worth of prog-rock,
cool jazz from the '50s or anything by the Pixies,
reader discretion is strongly advised.

So there's this song, you see.

This song is called "Call Me Maybe," and it's done by a singer named Carly Rae Jepsen. Surprisingly for a pop song these days, she co-wrote it; now, whether she just came up with a couple of lines in the middle of the thing or she wrote the bulk of the music and lyrics, I'm not sure, but her name's on the credits, and that's more than I've ever been able to do.

By all accounts, I should hate it.

But I don't. And here's why.

It's catchy.

I think a main source of this catchiness is the lyrical flow in the chorus -- some words linger, but other ones are chopped-up and spat out staccato-style, and if you can hang on to all of 'em, it can be very satisfying for the listener.

Words in songs give the listener something to hang their hat on; if you have a guitar you can play along with a song, but most people don't carry one everywhere they go (except that hippie dude in your residence who thought that and a soul patch was all you need to get laid (and he very probably got laid more than I did in uni, but whatever)), so singing is easy and portable. It makes you feel good because connects you with the song very directly in a melodic way; dancing does the same thing, but in a large-motor-skill way.

It's not what I'd normally listen to. And frankly, I don't believe I've ever sat around and thought, "That 'Call Me Maybe' song, that'd really hit the spot right about now." But it's good at what it does, and in the right environment (e.g. in a fire-code-violatingly-jam-packed New Year's Eve house party at five minutes to midnight), it can be a hell of a lot of fun.

So there.